Re: Boston Globe Online / Sports / WWZN cuts staff and programming

["Kevin Vahey" <kvahey@tmail.com>]

I m not sure the old WMEX from Quincy could meet the COL requirement at 
night as their signal was non existant in parts of Hyde Park and West 
Roxbury which of course are part of Boston.


On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 4:22PM -0500, dan.strassberg@att.net wrote:
> Non-critical daytime hours are almost a non-issue. WWZN's signal out 
> the back
> of the current array is almost equal to 50 kW from a minimum-height 
> (about 55-
> degree) stick. They just need to get close enough to the most distant 
> part of
> Boston to put 5 mV/m over the whole city. BUT, critical hours day IS a 
> problem
> and nighttime gets REALLY complicated.
>
> During critical hours, the signal toward WLAC can't exceed the 
> equivalent of
> roughly 1 kW ND. On 1510, you won't find a location, including N 
> Quincy, from
> which 1 kW ND delivers 5 mV/m to the whole City of Boston. And the 
> requirement
> for COL coverage during CH is the same as during midday--at least 5 
> mV/m over
> the entire land area of the COL.
>
> At night, the signal toward WLAC is the equivalent of only about 15 or 
> 20W. The
> station COULD become a daytimer, I guess. As such, it would not have to 
> deliver
> a specified signal anywhere, but it WOULD have to deliver 5 mV/m to the 
> entire
> COL during CH. The WJIB tower would probably be the best place to run 
> 15W
> nights on 1510. Moreover, I have a feeling that, for the right owner, 
> Bob would
> charge a lot less than $25,000 per month. But the coverage wouldn't 
> come close
> to what WJIB gets with 5W on 740.
>
> If you were to reduce WWZN to a daytimer and try to operate from 
> Soldiers'
> Field Rd, you'd have to find a new COL--and there isn't one--unless the 
> FCC
> were to allow Brighton despite the fact that Brighton is not a 
> political
> entity. We all know that plenty of stations are licensed to 
> "communities" that
> are not political entities, so this might be possible.
>
> But WWZN's value as a daytimer with limited CH power would be pretty 
> low (my
> guess is maybe $500k tops). Remember that in December CH starts at 2:15 
> PM and
> in the morning in January it lasts until 9:15 AM. There goes AM and PM 
> drive in
> the winter. Of course, if 1510 were to move to the WJIB tower, a COL of
> Somerville or Belmont might work--once the FCC opened an AM filing 
> window. For
> $500k, Bob might even be interested ;>). Somehow, though, I think Rose 
> City
> Radio (WWZN's legal owner) would be more receptive to an offer of $11 
> million
> from ABC than to an offer of $500k from Bob (or anybody else).
>
> But there you have it: WWZN Somerville, 1510 kHz 35 kW-D, 1 kW-CH, 
> 15W-N, ND-U.
> I'm not impressed. Because it's a full 10 kW CH, even WNTN has better
> facilities. Of course, since Nashville is west of Boston, the 1510 
> station
> would be eligible for a PSSA, so it could run maybe 500W for the first 
> hour
> after sunset and maybe 100W (I'm guessing) for the second hour. And no 
> doubt a
> PSRA would also be possbile. I'm still not impressed.
>
> --
> dan.strassberg@att.net
> 617-558-4205
> eFax 707-215-6367
>
>>  AM is a black art to me...so I don't know how well WWZN's existing 
>> contours
>>  could work from a single tower in Allston...but they'd have one hell 
>> of a
>>  downtown signal from there even at 5kW.